Category: Writing

Whew. Okay. So you have your germ of an idea, and you hopefully have some characters. Now what? Now you start sort of trying to fit them together. At this point, you probably don’t have a full plotline in your head. Or at least, you may not realize that you do.

Characters are usually one of the first things that come to me when I’m working on a story. They’re one of the things I started with a natural ability to do–which means when I needed to take the next step to improve my characterization, I had no idea how the hell to do that, because it had all been instinctual up to that point.

I’m a huge believer in people trying their hand at writing if they feel the urge. Writing is one of those things you can really only learn by doing: write, figure out what you did wrong, figure out how to fix it. The problem is, there are so many ways to work on a story, it can be intimidating. Hopefully this series of posts will help give you a few ideas where to start.

When I talk about writing, I talk a lot about ‘doing it anyway’. Working on this book has been a masterclass in ‘doing it anyway’. As I’m going through and making the requested changes and additions, I keep seeing things that make me cringe and go “is that stupid? It sounds stupid” and “OH MY GOD THIS PLOT MAKES NO SENSE”. And then I just have to take a deep breath and keep going.